Chapter Twenty-Nine
Mari
“So,” Lex says slowly, like xe is still up on that stage, entertaining xir masses. “Did you enjoy the show?”
Roos flinches. Our palms are slick with sweat, held together.
“We were just on our way to an aftercare room,” I explain, ready to lead Roos away, but when I take a step in that direction, Roos is frozen in place. “Come on, Roos.”
She doesn’t move. Her eyes are fixed on Lex. They look strangely glossy and empty.
“You came,” she says eventually.
And that confirms why Lex showed up and why Roos knew about it. She invited xem. My shoulders sink, and my whole body feels heavier than it did a moment ago.
“I’m glad I did.” Lex has the nerve to look me up and down. “You play well together.”
From anybody else, it’s the kind of compliment I’d store away somewhere easily accessible. But from Lex’s mouth, it feels like it’s laced with poison.
I thought I was getting over this. I thought we shared a different kind of tension while I was doing xir tattoo. I thought I was going to be able to move past this, if Roos is going to be in my life and Lex is to be in hers. But now…now I’m not so sure.
What I am sure of is that I refuse to let Lex be the reason I lose Roos. Not tonight. Not ever.
“Roos, baby girl.” I bring my other hand to her face and tuck her hair behind her ear. “Let’s go. Let’s go be just us.”
I say it to prompt her memory that us is now a thing. Isn’t that what we decided on that stage together?
“What are you doing now?” Roos asks, still looking at Lex.
Xe shrugs. “I’m hungry. I need to eat. And probably sleep.”
“You didn’t come,” Roos says, and it’s the last thing I expect her to say – so much so I splutter out an ugly guffaw, an awkward outburst of disgust.
“So what?” I raise my voice, my gaze flitting between Roos and Lex. “So fucking what?”
“Do you want to come?” Roos asks. Her voice is unchanged. Quiet and calm. Maddeningly so.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” I drop her hand.
Lex steps closer to both of us. “No, I don’t want to come. But I do want to take care of you.” Xe turns xir head to me. “Both of you.”
“Fuck no!” I put my hands out.
“Why not?” Roos looks down at me.
“Err, because…” I begin confidently, but then the words dry up. “Because I’m fine. I don’t need looking after.”
“You just did a heavy scene,” Lex tells me in a tone that I want to say is deeply patronising, but maybe that’s just me being an arsehole because technically xe isn’t wrong.
“You need aftercare. And Roos…” Xe inches even closer.
“I believe I’m right in thinking Roos also just came quite hard, and she needs a quiet space to relax. ”
“Yes, I do.” Roos nods. Gone is the confident, exuberant woman who topped me on the stage. Now I’m looking at the Roos who needs to submit, to surrender. And fuck, if I don’t want to give that Roos what she wants, what she needs.
“I agree Roos needs looking after,” I say through a tight jaw, “but I can do that.”
“You can. But you don’t have to.” Lex levels xir stare on me.
Every time. Every single time, I forget just how dark and intense and endless xir brown eyes are.
It’s impossible to look away even though it feels like it costs me.
“It doesn’t mean anything, Mari. It’s just kink.
Aftercare. It’s just what happens here at QISS.
It doesn’t change anything about what happens outside. ”
I would find comfort in Lex’s words if they didn’t also make me think xe can read my mind.
“Please, Mari,” Roos says, and she finds my hand again. Her fingers are trembling as they interlock with mine. She needs to be somewhere warm and now.
“Fine,” I say, and I bravely lock eyes with Lex again as I add, “You can join us.”
Us. Because fuck, even if it kills me, Roos and me, we will be an us.
*****
Over the last few months, I’ve learned there are four aftercare rooms at QISS, and the one we’re in is the one from my very first night at the club. It feels familiar and provides a thin layer of comfort as I try to ignore just how ill at ease I am with Lex joining us.
My head is a minefield of thoughts and questions as I take a seat on the couch that lines a wall. Wondering why Roos wants this. Imagining how this can possibly play out. Torturing myself with the possibility that this means Roos wants xem more than she wants me, and I will get left behind.
I try to silence the meanest voices. I have read a lot about polyamory in the last three months and have talked to my friend Emmy back home, who has both a girlfriend and a boyfriend.
I know enough to remind myself that staying open-minded is key, alongside communication and honesty.
But still, in no possible world do I imagine a dynamic where I have to share Roos with Lex.
Not that I would be sharing. I know that’s the wrong word.
I just… Fuck. My head is fucked. Everything is fucked. And it’s all because of Lex.
“Happy birthday, by the way,” Roos says to Lex as she comes to sit next to me.
Shit. I recall the date. Yes, it is Lex’s birthday. For so long after we broke up, this day would stand out even though I left it unmarked in my calendar and did my best to ignore it. I suppose over the years, its hold on me weakened. I suppose over the years, Lex’s hold on me weakened.
I should feel pleased by that, but I only feel numb.
“Thank you,” Lex says, and then xe does something that takes my breath away. It’s something I’ve never seen xem do before. It’s something I’ve never imagined xem doing.
Xe kneels in front of Roos and me.
“What do you need from me?” Xe asks.
I’m so perplexed by this change in Lex’s personality that I don’t have the composure to reply ‘for you to go fuck yourself.’ Roos’ reply is quicker anyway.
“I just want to relax a bit,” she says, leaning her elbows on her knees. “I’m kind of tired. And I have this headache I can’t get rid of. Maybe I need to take a shower. Lie down for a while.”
“Okay.” Lex nods and surveys the room like xe is making plans to facilitate all that. But then xe looks at me. “And you?”
I stare at xem, hoping my expression gives xem my answer, that I don’t need anything from xem.
“Let me take care of you too, Mari,” xe says, softer, and then xe sits back, resting xir backside on the heels of xir feet.
“I want to shower with Roos,” I say eventually because I do. I want us to have that moment.
“Good, okay.” Lex gets up. Xe goes to the walk-in shower area, switches the water on, and returns to us with a pile of fluffy red towels. “Let’s do this.”
Roos stands and strips like it’s the most natural thing for her to do in this moment.
I remain seated and tighten the belt of my robe because I outright refuse to let Lex see me naked.
But xe already has. Xe already did, tonight, just an hour ago.
“I will look away if you prefer,” Lex says, and fuck xem for reading my mind again.
Roos has already removed her wig and is making her way to the shower.
I narrow my eyes on xem and have a striking thought. Maybe my power is not in hiding myself from Lex. Maybe my power is showing xem who I am, and what xe can’t have.
Without saying a word and still holding Lex’s stare, I stand and undo my dressing gown. I let it drop to the ground, and then I grab the last towel Lex is holding. I follow Roos into the shower, feeling the heat of Lex’s stare on the back of my body.
Standing under the rainfall shower head, Roos smiles shyly at me as I approach. It’s a smile that poses an invitation, an opportunity to forget about Lex, to pretend that it’s only me and Roos in this room. That tonight is still about us.
“Are you okay?” I ask in a low voice as I join her under the spray. She makes room for me, and our bodies brush together, sending gentle electric shocks all over me.
“I’m okay,” she says. “Do you hate me?”
I frown at her deeply. “No, why?”
“For inviting Lex to join us. I know you don’t really want xem here.”
I open my mouth but stop the words I plan on saying, namely ‘I don’t know what I want’ because that feels too revealing, too inconclusive, too unhelpful right now, for her and for me.
“I’m okay with it,” I say instead. “I don’t hate you.”
“Good,” she says, and her smile has more to it now. “Turn around. I want to wash your hair.”
“Okay,” I say, and I give her my back. She angles my body under the water, and it flows over my head, into my eyes, and down my back. A few seconds later, I hear the click of a bottle and then Roos is moving me again, positioning me to one side.
“God, that feels good,” I say as she starts to massage shampoo into my hair. It smells of vanilla and coconut, and I inhale deeply.
“Did you know I wanted to be a hairdresser when I was a kid?” Roos tells me, and I can hear her smile is still there.
“Really?”
“Yeah,” she says. “I was obsessed with hair. Mostly with growing my own, even though my mum always cut it short. I also think it was because I didn’t actually go to a hairdresser until I was in my teens and transitioning.
Before that, it was my dad and his clippers and our bathroom mirror.
I only had references on TV or in films. And it always looked so fun.
And not just because of the transformations hairdressers did, making people look completely different and yet more like themselves – yeah, you can understand why I was obsessed with hairdressers when I say it like that – but I also loved how the hair salons on TV and in movies were often also the centre of little communities.
Hairdressers didn’t just look after people’s hair, they looked after people.
They talked all day long to people. They asked questions.
They cared. I think that really appealed to me, too. ”
“When you put it like that,” I say, as Roos moves me back under the spray, “your current job isn’t so different.”
“What do you mean?” she asks, and I think it’s working. It’s just us. I’m forgetting all about Lex.